Post Office former senior lawyer slammed over remote Tribunal request
The Post Office’s former general counsel is “putting her own convenience” first by filing an application to appear remotely from Australia for a Tribunal hearing over alleged misconduct during the Horizon IT Scandal, the legal regulator counsel said.
Jane MacLeod, the former Post Office general counsel from 2015 to 2019 and Nicholas Gould, a partner who represented a former sub-postmistress, were both referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) in June.
During a case management hearing for the Tribunal on Tuesday, the SRA barrister Paul Ozin KC of 23ES Chambers said MacLeod’s request for “remote attendance from a comfortable distance has the ability to diminish responsibility.”
“The entire application is coloured by a focus on her inconvenience and a failure to recognise the inconvenience caused to others,” he said.
“All those that have a personal interest in the proceedings will be given an experience in an open hearing that is qualitatively different to seeing her through a remote link in Australia,” Ozin KC added.
The Post Office scandal saw more than 900 subpostmasters wrongly prosecuted for theft and fraud between 1999 and 2009 due to faulty software developed by Fujitsu, a tech company.
MacLeod was asked to appear before the Horizon IT public inquiry in 2024 to answer questions about which internal documents were disclosed in the investigation and the advice she gave on how the case should be defended.
“There is a symmetry between the gravamen of the allegations brought against her and her approach to this application, of her putting her own convenience and the adverse impact to her above all other considerations,” the barrister added.
Giving evidence remotely would be ‘unconscionable’
It is not yet decided whether MacLeod will be required to give evidence, but the SRA’s Silk said it “would be unconscionable to give evidence remotely.”
The Horizon IT Scandal’s final inquiry report is reportedly due by the end of this year from the inquiry’s chair, Sir Wyn Williams, after the hearing concluded in December 2024.
Ozin KC said Sir Wyn had “decided her [MacLeod’s] attendance in person was desirable and asked her to do just that,” and that if she were to attend remotely, the SRA asserts MacLeod “presumed to put her own judgement for what was necessary above that of the inquiry chairman.”
MacLeod’s instructing barrister, Patrick Hill KC, of Cloth Fair Chambers, said if she were to attend remotely it “deprives nobody of open justice” as “she will be seen and heard.”
Alison Kellatt, president of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, said the Tribunal “has no power to compel her to travel to attend in person,” and granted her application to participate remotely.
The main hearing is set to take place at the beginning of Janaury 2027 for four days.
MacLeod and Gould were contacted for comment. The SRA declined to comment.